stuck on 'refreshing your media'.

Hi, I just got this yesterday and have had a lot of trouble with it, the software not installing properly, the device not being recognised; it getting stuck on the stage 'refreshing your media' - I've done a couple of soft resets; but it doesn't seem to be working. Can anyone help with this?

Re: stuck on 'refreshing your media'.

How long did you wait? It can only appear to be frozen (the progress bar doesn't really scale correctly to the time it will take to finish). Things that can cause it to take a long time: a large number of files and/or folders, corrupted files, and sloppy ID3 tags.

More about tags: when it says "refreshing your media", what it's really doing is building a database of all the information in the tags (title, artist, album, track number, etc.). The player can choke on messy tags, particularly very long comments. For some reason, some people try to put the artist's entire history (or some other ridiculously verbose nonsense) in the "Comment" tag. The best thing to do is to use a progam like MP3Tag (highly recommended, and FREE) to clean up the tags, deleting comments and paring down the other tags to only the essentials. Whatever tag editor you use, change the settings to save tags in ID3 v2.3 ISO 8859-1 format if possible. This format is the most compatible with Sansas.

If your tags are clean and it still freezes up, you probably have a corrupt file. To make it simpler to isolate the problem file(s), format the player (from the Settings>System Settings menu) and start reloading your files in smaller batches until it freezes up again.

Re: stuck on 'refreshing your media'.

Hi, that was very useful, thanks. I downloaded the MP3Tag cleaner, and although everything was pretty clean (no comments at all) there was a lot of info there when you add up all the tags. And when it refreshed this time, it didn't get stuck.

Re: stuck on 'refreshing your media'.

I dled the Mp3tag program and do not see an option for "cleaning" tags. Can you tell me where you found that in the program? My zip is refreshing media each time I unplug it from charging and it takes FOREVER to refresh.

Re: stuck on 'refreshing your media'.

There's no general "clean" button on MP3Tag. To clean via MP3Tag would mean to eliminate info. in tags that is not needed or to strip away long tags, and likewise to convert the tags (if needed) into the ISO type that the Clip will accept. Many of these tasks can be done viaq batch tasks--that is, to all the files as a whole, rather than 1-by-1.

Re: stuck on 'refreshing your media'.

I have a Clip Zip with a really persistent case of Refreshing Your Media. A Macbook was used to load tracks onto it, but then I got the RYM screen so took it to my Windows 7 machine to try to fix.

I've tried everything mentioned in the forums, including:

Holding the Hold button for 60 seconds to do a reset.

Manually updating to firmware 01.01.20A successfully.

Connecting to a Windows 7 machine in MSC mode and doing a full format (not quick format), then updating the firmware sucessfully. (i have done this at least 3 times now)

formatting the device from within its settings menu

Letting it do its Refreshing Media thing for 10-30 minutes, even with no media loaded.

Even with no media loaded on, I get the Refreshing Your Media screen stuck on. When I force MSC and load on some tracks (clean id3 tags) I can get it to play tracks, but the Refreshing your media loop comes on whenever:

the Hold button is the first thing you press after powering on

long-press the Hold button to shut down.

It also goes into the Refreshing Your Media loop unpredictably when pressing the Hold button (instead of the lock coming on, I get the Refreshing Your Media).